Learning From Oprah

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Like so many of my contemporaries, I’ve learned a lot from Oprah over the years. I’ve read books (fiction and otherwise) that she discussed, discovered one of my favorite songs because she showcased it, and internalized the safety tip never to allow a criminal to take you to another location.  But that isn’t all…

Oprah has established a media enterprise unlike any previously known, and so it shouldn’t surprise us that we can learn some serious business lessons from her example. Like so many successful people (including those you may look up to as consummate rainmakers), Oprah makes it look easy.  “All she did” for the last 25 years was to talk with people.  How hard can it be, right?

The truth, of course, is that making it look so easy requires many hours of work. Although practicing law is radically different from being a talk show host or media mogul, Oprah’s model offers five lessons for lawyers — even for those of you who don’t like Oprah.

  1. Surround yourself with a highly-qualified, dedicated team. Oprah can’t do it alone, of course, and neither can you.  (Not even you, sole practitioner!)  Harpo Studios (Oprah’s company) employs several hundred people, all of whom work 12+-hour days during the show’s season and fulfill a variety of roles from idea generators to hair/make-up/wardrobe artists.  Even a few minutes of the Behind The Scenes show reveals how many talented people contribute to the success of each one-hour Oprah show.Fortunately, you don’t need all of that support for your practice.  You must, however, have administrative help of some sort (even if that means using technology rather than having a live assistant) and you must have a sounding board. If you’re doing everything in your practice, you’re wasting valuable time.  If you don’t have trusted colleagues and mentors who can help you handle challenges and opportunities in your practice, you’re missing out on feedback that could keep you from making easily avoidable missteps.
  2. Trust your team, and delegate to them – but recognize that you hold the responsibility for their actions. There’s no point in having a terrific team if you ask them to perform only menial tasks that leave no room for development.  (That’s one of the top delegation mistakes I discussed here nearly three years ago.)No matter how good your team may be, you must always be aware that it’s your practice and that everything that happens in it is your responsibility. That can be a tough pill to swallow, but when you accept it and act accordingly, you’ll find that it also offers power.  Even if things go wrong and you’re required to take responsibility for a big mistake, you’ll know that you can also take responsibility for fixing the mistake and ensuring that it doesn’t happen again.  If you resort to blame instead, the power of correction lies with the person who made the mistake and depends on their willingness and skill, not yours.This lesson came across loud and clear when one of Oprah’s guests went AWOL between an afternoon rehearsal and the show’s taping the next morning. It would have been easy for Oprah to have played the diva and blamed the guest or her producers, but her focus shifted immediately to treating the audience to breakfast during the unexpected delay and managing the schedule for the rest of the day.  Of course she had help (per point #2) but her focus was directed to correcting the problem rather than faulting anyone for allowing it to happen.
  3. Never, ever compromise on your principles. This lesson popped up when Oprah’s producers told her that Mrs. Obama would be a guest on a show dealing with children’s health.  Oprah was careful to ensure that producers had not leaned on her friendship with the Obamas to get Mrs. Obama to attend.  Although few people would criticize her for using a personal relationship to get a guest who would bring an even brighter spotlight to an important issue, Oprah’s personal code of conduct prevented her from doing so.  Watching the show made it clear that any producer who dared to call the White House to invite Mrs. Obama onto the show would have been in big, big trouble.Lawyers are bound by sometimes complex and counterintuitive ethical rules, but many decisions fall outside the scope of those rules. How do you talk about your clients and opposing counsel when they can’t hear you?  Do you talk about them?  You’ll face plenty of “grey area” decisions in business development.  Where the rules are silent, or when there’s a big gulf between what’s allowed and what may be tasteful, check your own compass and guide yourself by it.
  4. Connect with people, and be yourself. The world began to fall in love with Oprah when she shared her story, her joy, her tears.  She quickly moved beyond reporter and host to personality.  We could see ourselves in her and her experience, and many drew courage from her example.Lawyers sometimes feel the need to crawl into a legal straight-jacket, to act as a lawyer “should” act, to speak as a lawyer “should” speak, to think as a lawyer “should” think. In some circumstances, that’s the only proper approach.  When it comes to business development, however, that’s boring and distancing.  Acting, speaking, and thinking just like everybody else makes marketing challenging because there’s nothing to distinguish you from others in your practice area.  Skill is and must be the bedrock of your practice, but being a genuine person will attract people and help you to build relationships of trust.
  5. Love what you do. Doing anything for 25 years is an accomplishment, and even though the Oprah Winfrey Show has brought Oprah fame, fortune, and unparalleled opportunities, it can’t always have been easy.  She had to love it.Do you love what you do? It’s more than an idle question.  If you do, you’ll talk about it, engage in professional development, and be engaged with your practice simply because you enjoy what you do.  If not, you’ll have to push yourself to do what might otherwise flow more easily.If you don’t love practicing law, you have three choices:  find what you do love about it, compromise by compartmentalizing personal satisfaction from professional motivation, or leave the practice.

When Life Throws You A Curveball…

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Life has a way of throwing curveballs. Sometimes they come in the form of emergencies that demand attention, sometimes they’re staff departures (planned or otherwise), and sometimes they’re opportunities that you just can’t pass up, even though jumping in will eat every bit of time and energy you have.

How do you cope with those curveballs? You can implement three strategies now so that you can deal with curveballs as they come your way.

  1. Create an “operations manual”. Those of you working in large firms may have access to some sort of manual that defines how certain tasks are to be completed.  However, whether you’re in a large firm or working as a sole practitioner, you must have a document that explains how we do things around here. How should an assistant answer your telephone, when should he schedule appointments for you, and what should he tell callers who need to reach you urgently?  What needs to be accomplished every day without fail?  It’s daunting to imagine creating such a document from scratch.  Start today.  Document every task that you complete and request your assistant to do the same.  (No assistant?  No excuse!  If everything is in your head, the need is even greater.)  The manual that you build will allow you to cut down on the time necessary to train a new employee, and if you are called out of the office without notice, the manual gives a roadmap to keep things running without you.
  2. Use technology well. Most lawyers now use some sort of electronic calendar and docketing system.  Who else has access to your professional calendar?  Even if you choose not to allow anyone to that information on a day-to-day basis, you should consider creating a login that you can provide on an as needed basis to an assistant.  If you are currently working without an assistant, you should create a way for a temporary assistant to have access to your calendar so that she can contact your clients and reschedule appointments if necessary.  (In fact, it may be incumbent upon you to do so, depending on the ethics rules in place in your jurisdiction.)  Let’s hope that you’re reachable in the case of a curveball — but if you’re hit by a bus, some mechanism must exist to meet your clients’ needs.
  3. Maintain a comprehensive “to do” list. Many of us go through our days tucking “to do” items into our memory.  This approach creates stress, as you’ve experienced if you’ve ever been lying in bed, just about to drift off, when you’re suddenly jolted to full consciousness with the question, did I send that email / make that call?? For purposes of the “what if” conversation, however, if you maintain your task list in your head and get pulled away by a curveball, there’s little chance that you’ll be able to sort tasks effectively to be sure every task is covered.  If the curveball should take you suddenly out of commission, you’ll have no opportunity to pause and download all of the tasks in your head onto paper.  Instead, use a Word document, a spreadsheet, or task management application to keep track of every task (of any magnitude), and be sure you can sort those tasks by due date, importance, client, and project.

If you use these strategies, you’ll be able to handle the curveballs that come your way. Remember that curveballs generally come with no notice, so assess your preparations today and begin to fill the holes you discover now.

Why isn’t it working?

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A potential client called to discuss how I might help her with her business development activities, and I asked what she’d tried. As I often discover in those conversations, she’d tried a number of approaches, all to no avail.  On her list:  writing articles, teaching seminars, advertising, attending networking events, posting her profile on various social networking sites, and so on.  But she had no results to report.  Not surprisingly, she was ready to conclude that she wasn’t meant to be a rainmaker.

If you see no results, it’s easy to conclude that it’s time to throw in the towel. It’s discouraging to work at something — especially something as important as business development — and get poor results.

This inclination to accept failure is even more common for those who believe that rainmaking is a skill reserved for a few special lawyers.  (As a sidenote, ponder this:  not every lawyer will be a superstar rainmaker.  But every lawyer can be a “mist-maker”, and depending on your practice setting, that may be all you need to shoot for.)  But should you accept failure as permanent and give up business development activity?  No.

Three mistakes are often responsible when a lawyer has worked hard at rainmaking without generating meaningful results:

  1. The lawyer is measuring the wrong thing. New business is the clearest measurement of rainmaking success, but that’s like starting a diet and measuring success only by reaching goal weight.  There are all sorts of midpoints that indicate success:  making new contacts, developing relationships, building a strong reputation in your field, and so on.  These “interim successes” indicate forward movement — assuming, of course, they’re measured as progress toward the ultimate goal of bringing in new business and not as an end in themselves.
  2. The lawyer hasn’t brought in new business…yet. “Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish,” John Quincy Adams observed.  In other words, don’t give up before an activity has had time to produce results.  Networking is a key place where lawyers fall short.  A single conversation is incredibly unlikely to generate new business, and mere membership in a group without any real involvement is equally unlikely to be successful using any measure.  Whether it’s networking or another activity, hopping from one activity to another generates a lot of motion but very little forward movement.  Choosing one or two marketing tactics is almost certain to bring better results — unless…
  3. The lawyer is doing the wrong things, or doing them in the wrong way. No matter how persistently the task is undertaken, if it’s fundamentally flawed, it won’t work.  Let’s take networking again.  If your idea of networking is attending meetings, talking incessantly about yourself, your skills, your qualifications, and your experience, plus pressing your business card on anyone who happens within an arms’ length, you are destined to fail.  That’s networking at its worst and it’s unattractive to just about everyone.  Similarly, well-performing activities that don’t involve talking directly with potential clients and referral sources likely won’t produce business.  Bottom line:  good activity done wrong doesn’t work.

Your task this week: Are you making any of these mistakes?  Check especially to see how you’re measuring your success.  Because lawyers are trained to focus on the end game (here, landing the new business), this is one of the key mistakes I often see among new clients.

Welcome!

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What greeting do your clients receive when they contact your office? Do clients feel that they’re welcome?  Or are they left with the impression that they’re interrupting something more important?

How your staff handles client contact (or how you handle it, if your practice doesn’t include staff members) will have a significant, though probably unspoken, impact on your client engagements. What’s more, whoever answers the telephone and greets visitors constitutes the first line of your marketing team, since satisfying clients may lead to repeat business and referrals.

We so easily fall into the trap  of thinking that lawyers provide client service and that receptionists, legal assistants, secretaries, and other staff members provide administrative support that really doesn’t constitute client service. While that may be true on one level, it’s wise to consider how much contact the average client has with your staff as opposed to with you.  Unless you’re a sole practitioner without an assistant, chances are reasonably good that the first person your client speaks with is a staff member.  The client will then engage with you with that first impression in mind.

It’s easy to identify and weed out those who deliver obviously unacceptable client contact. The example that comes to mind is one I overheard a few years ago while waiting for a colleague to get off a call so we could talk:  “Well, [Mr. Smith], I  know you think you’re [lawyer’s] only client, but you aren’t!”  Fortunately, someone who would make a comment like that is generally either retrained or fired with haste.

But what about the subtle effects of less-offensive but thoughtless behavior? Have you ever stepped back to observe how non-attorney staff in your office interacts with your clients?

Take a lesson from an Atlanta law firm receptionist who turns visitors into welcome guests simply by greeting each visitor as if he matters. Janette engages every person who walks in.  She knows returning clients, asks how their travel has been, and makes them feel welcome.  When she meets someone new, she exchanges a few comments with them — not the kind of chatter that can annoy someone already on edge, just some niceties that pave the way for further conversation if the visitor so desires.  Every person who walks in is greeted, made welcome, and appreciated.

Here are a few areas to consider as you question what your staff contributes to client relations:

  • Does the receptionist greet visitors with a smile and a friendly word? Especially in the last few years, many staff members have been asked to do more work with fewer resources, and stress has increased.  It’s important not to allow that stress to reach the client.
  • How are telephones answered? Answering by barking out a business name may be efficient, but it’s hardly welcoming.
  • Are clients treated as valued guests and recognized as individuals rather than being lumped together as fungible invoice-paying units?
  • Are basic courtesies observed in communications? For example, if emailing an invoice, is a cover note included thanking the client for his or her business?
  • Do you introduce clients to your staff members, or are staff members simply nameless, faceless people who interact with clients when you’re unavailable?  A simple introduction can transform a staff member from being regarded as only a gatekeeper to being viewed as a valuable resource.

Notice what’s happening when your clients and potential clients interact with your staff. If it’s a negative contribution, how can you help to create a shift?  And if it’s a positive contribution, do you acknowledge and reward it?

Book Review: UnMarketing

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UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging.

“Marketing happens every time you engage (or not) with your past, present and potential customers.  If you believe business is built on relationships, make building them your business.”

Scott Stratten is a marketing consultant who excels in viral, social, and authentic marketing, which he refers to as “unMarketing”. His philosophy is that you can share your knowledge and expertise while engaging with those who are interested in what you do, and that you’ll be top-of-mind when a need for your services arises.  UnMarketing expands on that philosophy.

In 56 short chapters, each of which is freestanding and reads almost like an oversized blog post, you’ll get an overview of “new-school” marketing. While some of the tactics shared with you may be new to you, you’ll probably get the most impact from the book’s overall flavor.  In [very] brief:  don’t lead with a “me” focus, don’t use expensive, scattershot advertising, and don’t market to others in ways you hate to be marketed to.  Instead, learn to build relationships and share your expertise so that others come to trust you.

Stratten’s focus on relationship-building and marketing by sharing useful information (“content marketing”) is appropriate for any professional. One of the most eye-opening lessons in the book comes on page two in the form of a pyramid that illustrates how people make decisions on whom to hire to provide a service.
(You can find the graphic here, on Stratten’s Ryze page.)  If you think marketing or business development primarily means meeting strangers and convincing them to hire you, you’ll experience a seismic shift from this graphic alone — and the rest of the book will show you how to take the next steps.

One of my favorite chapters deals with “new school” networking. Stratten argues that networking is best accomplished when you’re stepping into a room of people you already know, perhaps through social media, so that “[t]he event isn’t the introduction; it’s the escalation of the relationship.”  Stratten identifies the four types of people you’re likely to meet in “old school” networking:

  • The Great One: the consummate networker, who listens, connects with others, and makes sure not to monopolize the conversation.
  • The Awkward One: someone who’s uncomfortable in networking and accordingly does everything by the book.  Because this person is so uncomfortable, they tend to attach themselves to one person, and escape is difficult.
  • The Dude with Scotch: this is the man who uses hard liquor as social lubricant with predictably disastrous effect.
  • The Card Collector: the person whose primary goal for attending a networking event is to make sure that every person in the room receives a card.  Unfortunately for The Card Collector, because there’s no real engagement, no one actually wants to receive a card.

Stratten, a heavy Twitter user, prefers to meet people online before the event so that there’s a pre-existing relationship and a conversation already underway. The best tip from this chapter is to use Twitter (or other social media) to meet people before attending a conference so that you’re among acquaintances (if not friends) by the time you get there.  If you don’t use social media in this way, consider reaching out by telephone instead for a quick “get acquainted” conversation.  You’re limited to establishing pre-meeting contact with those you already know or know of, but it can still be quite effective.

UnMarketing is a delightful read in part because of the humor that Scott weaves into the book. By sheer happenstance, I purchased a hard copy rather than a Kindle version, so glancing at the footnotes scattered throughout was simple.  These are not law review style footnotes (read:  necessary but dull).  These are asides that are fun, funny, and illustrative, the kind of comments that you might imagine being delivered sotto voce as you drink coffee and learn from a regular guy who really knows his stuff but doesn’t take himself too seriously.  This is not a “guru” book, although Stratten could easily qualify as a guru in his field.

Why should lawyers read the book? Lawyers traditionally have little or no knowledge about marketing, and there’s a great deal we can learn from marketers.  Thanks to the rise of content marketing, we can draw analogies from approaches and tactics used by a wide variety of other service providers.  Lawyers are trained to be experts, and one place we often fall short in marketing that expertise is in placing the focus on our clients rather than on our own expertise, and UnMarketing offers an eye-opening perspective on why that’s a fatal mistake and what you should be doing instead.  Plus, it’s fun.  You won’t regret picking up this book, and once you pick it up, you’ll find it difficult to put down.

Don’t Underplay Yourself

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When a law firm hires me to work with a junior associate, very often one part of the engagement centers on the associate’s leadership presence and self-confidence — how he or she presents to others. (Of course, that focus is not by any means unique to junior associates.)

Although reviewers may use a variety of words such as proactive, poised, assertive, or self-assured, they’re usually looking to see to what extent the lawyer is able to present as a leader, as someone who is sufficiently self-confident to inspire others’ confidence. Such a person typically contributes to conversations, asks insightful questions, and is willing to express an opinion or espouse a position.

Interactions with someone who lacks this level of confidence tends to leave others (supervising lawyers and clients alike) uncertain of the message being conveyed.  Does a lack of contribution indicate lack of comprehension?  Boredom?  Something else entirely?  It may be difficult to interpret what’s happening, but the result is a lack of clarity and an unwillingness to rely on the lawyer whose self-presentation is found to be lacking.  The consequences can be significant, including unduly slow career progression (or even being fired) and difficulty in building client relationships.

For instance, I was working with one client (let’s call him Tom) who was hoping to make partner and entered coaching to strengthen his performance so he’ll be a strong candidate.  He’d picked up on some comments that made him question whether he was viewed as partner material.  I found Tom to be intelligent, personable, and funny.  I also noticed that when I’d ask him a question about his work, he downplayed the role he’d played.

It puzzled me, because I could tell from the kind of work he was describing that he was a heavy lifter on the cases, but to hear him talk he was simply supporting work done by others.  One day, Tom said that a particular concern he held about making partner was that it didn’t seem like anyone regarded his work as being important or notable. He explained the evidence for his feeling, and then I asked his permission to share an observation.

I told him that when he described his own work, he minimized and understated his contribution.  To hear him tell the story, he contributed little more than hours — and certainly nothing critical in terms of strategy or deep analysis.  But when I asked specifically and pressed, he’d tell me about tasks he’d done and decisions he’d made that were quite high-level.  My assessment was that because he was so careful not to overstate his contribution — and perhaps so uncomfortable being in the spotlight — he didn’t give a fair opportunity for someone to understand the kind and level of work that he was doing.

We devised a plan for Tom to share more about his work, and he discovered that when he changed his communication style and became more open about what he was doing, people began to appreciate the scope of his work and to understand what he was capable of doing. He got more and better work, and he felt that others’ perception of him was more accurate.

Michelle, another client, was upset to receive a review that indicated that some clients didn’t want to talk with her because they felt that she didn’t have a sufficient grasp of the right legal strategy to accomplish their aims. When pressed for details, a reluctant partner admitted that although he knew Michelle understood exactly what was at stake and how to advance the clients’ interests, her comments were so often peppered with words like maybe and possibly and her inflection was so often questioning that she just didn’t seem to be sure of what she was saying.

The result was that her communications undermined his confidence in her even though he knew she was almost invariably right about what she was saying. After making a concerted effort to notice the habits that the partner identified, Michelle started speaking with more authority and more clarity, which over time (and along with other changes that Michelle implemented) increased the confidence that others put in what Michelle said.

How do you know if your presence isn’t as strong as it should be? Here are three common signs:

  1. You create “wiggle room” with your word choice or with your vocal inflection.
  2. You feel the urge to speak up or to ask a question but you stop short — and then someone says what you’ve been thinking, and you feel frustrated. (Or you do speak up but your comments aren’t much noted, and then someone says effectively the same thing and gets more attention.)
  3. You find that you generally speak much less often than others in a meeting. (But this can be a sign of strong presence if, when you speak, others give significant weight to your comments.)

If you recognize yourself in these signs or if you’ve received feedback that you need to be more proactive, perhaps we should talk. While learning to project more confidence and a stronger leadership presence requires stepping outside a comfort zone, the impact can be dramatic.  Your job and your client relationships may depend on your ability to inspire confidence.  Ready to take the first steps?  Contact me to set up a time for us to get acquainted.

You are invisible. Go visible.

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I spend a great deal of time helping my clients find ways to showcase their expertise and to raise their profile within their communities. My clients love the charge that comes from sharing useful information through writing or speaking and building a reputation as a highly-skilled practitioner in the field.  Even better, they learn how to create business rewards so that their clientele grows.

But sometimes, it isn’t that easy. Clients come to me never having written an article, never having presented anywhere.  Especially when a new client has been trying to have an article published or to find a forum to speak but he’s been thwarted in that goal, discouragement hangs like a dense, dark fog.  Being invisible hurts.

Invisible lawyers don’t get as many clients. (And in our economy, in which the number of legal jobs continues to shrink and client demands continue to rise, that’s an ugly reality.)  They don’t advance in their firms or their communities.  It becomes all too easy to question why things are so difficult.

I talked with a potential client recently who was feeling the pain of being a “best kept secret” in his community. I offered some suggestions and projections of the likely result.  He could see the opportunity to shift his experience right away, and I could feel the fog lift.  After we talked, I turned to send an email to another client, and I saw this message in my Google Chat account:

You are invisible.  Go visible.

I chuckled:  that summarizes exactly what I’d said to my new client. Google offers a handy link to “go visible”, but the good news is that it isn’t really that much more difficult for an attorney to go visible — but you will have to invest more time than just clicking a link.  Maybe.

If you’re ready to go visible, consider these five ideas of steps that will raise your profile:

  1. Use LinkedIn to ask and answer questions. Depending on how you phrase your question, even asking can position you as an expert, and answering allows you to showcase your knowledge and experience.  Other forums exist for similar activity, including Quora, a newer site populated by key high-tech players (among others) focused entirely on Q&A.
  2. Join a substantive committee of a local bar association or industry group. Think carefully about whether working with lawyers will advance business development goals, but if your objective is to develop your reputation by speaking or writing, bar association groups are an ideal first step.
  3. Host your own seminar. Select a topic that would generate substantial interest and could be covered in an hour or ninety minutes.  Invite your contact, your clients and former clients, and your clients’ contacts.  I recommend you consider a breakfast seminar for reasons of convenience and cost; whatever time you select, be sure that you’re working with traffic flow and at a time likely to be convenient to the bulk of your potential attendees.  Start with a free seminar and allow time for networking.  Whether you speak or simply host/moderate, you’ll raise your profile.
  4. Research local radio or television shows that speak to your audience and pitch an idea for a segment or a show. Don’t expect to start on the hottest show, but if you establish your usefulness as a resource and make a good showing, you’ll likely be able to leverage one appearance to future benefit.
  5. Use the power of video. You can create your own video series (effectively an Internet-based television channel) to give you a forum for discussing whatever is new and important in your field of practice.  If you create a descriptive name for your channel, you can create a go-to resource for a small group of people who will be passionately interested in what you’re sharing.

These are just five examples of how you might go from invisible to having a significant platform that helps to establish your expertise in your field. If you’ve been hungering for a way to raise your profile quickly, try one of these.  The results may amaze you.

Book Review

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Improv Wisdom:  Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up
By Patricia Ryan Madson

One of my mentors recommends that her clients invest in an improv class to help with sales conversations. When she made that recommendation, I broke into a cold sweat, but I also started to notice how frequently I was hearing that recommendation.  If you’d like a touch of improv training without going to a class, read Improv Wisdom:  Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up.

For many of us who’ve built a life on out-preparing our competition, the title alone is revolutionary and deeply confrontational. When I was in practice, preparation was the fundamental, non-negotiable step necessary for any shot at prevailing in litigation, and I’d never encourage anyone to skip that.  Know your facts cold, develop your arguments and your persuasive analysis, and anticipate what may come up in the course of conversation.  To advise otherwise is, in my opinion, catastrophically unwise.

Yes, you must prepare, and…


Prepare, and prepare to go with the flow of what happens once you’re in the act, whether that’s a business meeting, a hearing, or a meeting with a potential client. In my view, preparation and improvisation are two inseparable sides of a coin.  Madson writes:

The habit of excessive planning impedes our ability to see what is actually in front of us.  The mind that is occupied is missing the present.

What’s “excessive planning”? It varies based on the situation, but in the context of business development, excessive planning is most often manifest in the course of a meeting with a potential client.  The potential client is talking, and the listener is anticipating, not listening.  “Ah, she mentioned a policy in the employee handbook about appropriate Internet use, and she was fired.  I bet there’s a connection.  Now, what did I read last week about that?  Doesn’t matter, I can simply tell her about general principles and the trend toward…”

Imagine internal dialogue that says instead, “Ah, she mentioned a policy in the employee handbook about appropriate Internet use, and she was fired.  What does that mean?  How might I be able to help?”  That illustrates Madson’s definition of a good improviser:

A good improviser is someone who is awake, not entirely self-focused, and moved by a desire to do something useful and give something back and who acts upon this impulse.

Madson identifies three keys to improv:

  • Remain present to the conversation.
  • Say yes. By saying yes, you share control and allow for a mutually created approach.  “The yes invites us to find out what is right about the situation, what is good about the offer, what is worthy in the proposal.”
  • Add something, or develop the conversation in a positive direction. When using yes, we often respond with, “Yes, but.”  But contradicts the preceding yes, so try “Yes, and” instead.  “I don’t think I have time to deal with this right now.”  “Yes, and the great likelihood is that you’re always going to be busy and letting this lie will just allow the problem to grow.  Let’s see how we can address this without burdening you too much.”

One of the most impactful ideas is that of bricolage. Bricolage is a French word for “the art of commandeering the materials at hand — what is most obvious — to solve the problem … You start by carefully noticing what is available.”  To me, this sums up improv:  be present, notice what’s true, accept the facts as they are (say yes), and then add to the situation with what you have at hand.  How might you apply bricolage in business?

Madson offers thirteen maxims, with supporting exercises for each. One of my favorite exercises from the book is designed to kick-start activity:  “Start anywhere.  Identify a project or task that needs to be done.  When you put this book down, follow your first thought and begin the job.  Do the very first thing that comes to mind.  Continue doing what comes next.”  If you are a procrastinator, nothing could be wiser.

While you may not become a master improv artist after reading Improv Wisdom, I can promise that applying it will change the way you see and respond to what’s happening in your practice. Even if you never pick up the book or take an improv class, try an experiment and substitute “yes and” for “yes but” for a week.  Notice the results, and then decide for yourself which approach is more effective.

Waiting for the magic date?

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One of the most interesting things about having a book is watching the sales.  A few weeks ago, I saw that sales had almost increased by a factor of five for the month of December for my book The Reluctant Rainmaker.

You’d think I’d be happy. If the sales had quintupled in April or August, I would have been ecstatic!

Sadly, I’d be willing to bet that many of the people who purchased marketing books in December bought because they’d resolved to learn about business development in 2011 and finally, finally build the business they knew they could. Now that we’re ten weeks into the new  year, how many of those books do you suppose are sitting unread on a bookshelf?

Imagine Larry the lawyer who goes through an end-of-the-year review (formal or otherwise) and decides that he’s got to get his act in gear.  He’s got to bring in more business, or 2011 is going to look as bleak as 2010 did.  So he buys a book in mid-December.  But December means year-end billing and collections, not to mention the holidays and all the requisite family activities.  Despite his good intentions, Larry just doesn’t have time to read the book, and he certainly doesn’t have time to make a plan.

January 31 rolls around and Larry still hasn’t found the time for business development planning.  So, what’s changed in his practice?  Nothing.  Neither the new year nor the resolutions he made nor the book he bought (but didn’t finish reading) made a bit of difference. But Larry’s determined.  February 1 is a fresh start, or there’s always Chinese New Year.  Where’s Larry headed?  Nowhere good, though he has the best of intentions.

January 1 isn’t a magic date. Starting a project at the beginning of the year doesn’t portend success any more than beginning a diet on Monday.  If you resolved to intensify your business development efforts this year and you haven’t hit your goals, yet, here’s some good news:  I tend to see more success and more investment from clients who dig into rainmaking activity on a random date — March 10 or May 16 or June 4 — than I do from those who wait until the new year to get started.

I’ve heard from a number of lawyers who’ve been beating themselves up because they had high hopes for 2011 and haven’t yet hit their stride for the year.  And here’s what I’ve told them:  start today.  Don’t wait for tomorrow or Monday, or for the start of the next quarter.  If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing now.

Decision time:  what have you been putting off?  Make a plan and get it done today; if not today, get it done this week.

Find Your Weekly Minimum

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What happens to your business development activity when you get busy? If you’re like many others, you may find that it slips.  I’ve had more than a handful of clients who hire me to ramp up their rainmaking, and they succeed — right to the point that they’re so busy they pause and start backsliding.

We’ve all been taught that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and there’s truth to that. I’m no hunter, but we all know intuitively that if you focus exclusively on the bird in hand and ignore all the others, you’ll have to start from scratch when you need to find another bird.

“I’m going to pause for a little while, just til I get this work off my desk.” That’s one of the most dangerous statements you can make.  Throw that out too often, and I can almost guarantee that you won’t get the results you want from your rainmaking efforts.  You’re likely to end up tired, behind the 8-ball, stressed out, and feeling like a failure.  And here’s why…

When you “hit pause”, you’re not pausing at all:  you’re just stepping into the feast/famine cycle. In this cycle, you need new business so you start business development activity; you grow your practice, only to slack off when you have substantial new business on your desk and you turn to getting the work done, which causes you to drop back on your rainmaking activity; and the result is that the flow of new business drops and at some point your realize you need more business — and the cycle starts again.

Fortunately, there’s a simple way out to interrupt this cycle. Identify the minimal amount of rainmaker activity you can do and still generate new leads and new referrals.

  • You might find that you get referrals and new business from current clients, and so you might decide that, no matter what, you will make time to take one client to lunch each month and to plan a phone call to check in with others once a week.  (And if you get significant additional work from current clients, you’re in a great position, because that means that you have an opportunity to engage in business development activity every time you do billable work.)
  • You might analyze where your clients have been coming from and discover that your blog is generating a lot of calls that lead to business.  If so, you should ensure that you post at least weekly, and you might even investigate hiring someone to help you with SEO or AdWords, to gain additional visibility.
  • You might discover that you have an effective follow-up system and that you can expect to get measurable new business after speaking.  Develop a system that allows you to send out proposals to speak on a regular basis, and ensure that you speak at least quarterly.

As long as you have a reasonable rationale for your minimal level of rainmaking activity and you stick to it, you’re likely to avoid the feast/famine cycle. You’ll continue to see some variation from time to time, but when you’re strategic and consistent, those swings will be much less significant.

Here’s your checklist for determining your MERA (Minimal Effective Rainmaker Activity):

  1. Review the sources of your business over the last two years. What activity generated the most business?  What generated the least?  Be sure to distinguish activity that’s slow yield from activity that’s low yield.
  2. Set a minimum activity level in the top producers. Calendar whatever it is that you’ve determined you’ll do, and don’t allow yourself to delay, even when you’re busy.
  3. Delete all other rainmaking activity from your calendar…FOR NOW. This approach is not designed to generate the most business possible.  It’s designed to defeat the feast/famine cycle.  It contains the seeds for long-term success, but you’ll need to do more in the long run to produce the maximum results.
  4. Set your date for re-evaluation and don’t get complacent. The only downside to MERA is that you can lull yourself into thinking that any activity is adequate for any circumstance, and that just isn’t true.  MERA is only for the times when you’re tempted to press pause.

If you don’t know how to determine what activity is most likely to yield results for you, you’ll have trouble with this task. Building a practice requires you to know what produces results so you can do more of that.  If you don’t, we should talk.  Schedule a complimentary consultation.